Labour hire arrangements

Historically, employment on an ongoing full-time or part-time basis has been the norm in the Australian workforce. However, other types of employment have become increasingly common, including casual work and labour hire arrangements.

A labour hire arrangement arises when a labour hire company provides workers to a “host business” which is a customer of the labour hire company. The worker may an employee of the labour hire company or be engaged through a contracting arrangement. This creates a tri-partite relationship under which the host business is able to avoid the rights and obligations it would otherwise owe the worker if they were engaged directly as an employee and reduces the risk that a contracting arrangement may give rise to a court determining that there is a common law employment relationship. A labour hire arrangement has several advantages for a company including, reducing overall administration and labour costs and increasing work-force flexibility to fluctuations in demand for labour.

See Labour hire arrangements.